Philadelphia street grants community an enclave for arts

PHILADELPHIA — Sometimes, a single street corner can echo a whole neighborhood's heartbeat. It's like that at the intersection of Greene and Carpenter in Philadelphia's Mount Airy neighborhood, where the Weavers Way Co-op and C.W. Henry School stand as twin beacons to the aspirations and triumphs of this diverse community.

Catty-corner to the school and across from the co-op, you'll find Moving Arts of Mount Airy (MaMa), a movement studio offering classes that go well beyond the standard yoga and Pilates. Walk by on a typical afternoon and you'll hear the infectious beat of a hip-hop jazz class or glimpse a group of foil-wielding preteens in full fencing gear. You might also catch sight of a diminutive woman with a head of shiny black curls, a purposeful bounce to her step. Then again, you might not. She moves fast.

Her name is Pamela Rogow, and she's the founder and guiding light of the thriving mind/body studio that completes this corner's triumvirate of community stalwarts. She also lives here, above the shop.

Originally from Los Angeles, Rogow moved to Philadelphia 10 years ago to run the museum at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Driving through Mount Airy with her sister one day, she caught sight of the storefront property. Once an apothecary, then Edelson's bakery, the building was most recently home and studio to artist Jimmy Leuders.

Though the place was ragged, "I thought it was smashing," says Rogow, who fell for the "secret" second-floor roof terrace and a few unexpected assets -- a marble fireplace from the old Wanamaker estate, random-width pumpkin-pine floors, lovely deep windowsills.

In her professional design work of exhibits and interpretive programs, Rogow covers the spectrum from large public spaces, such as the Cincinnati Riverwalk, to work for museums and libraries. For this design project, she enlisted help from a rich neighborhood talent pool. Janet Cleveland, for example, added warmth and texture to the living room walls with a soft rag finish.

On the roof terrace, Rogow came up with the idea of "sod spots," a circle and rectangle of emerald-green grass that seem to sprout magically from the deck. "I think of it like a pizza," she says. "First, I put down a sheet of plastic, then some small pebbles and some mulch, and then I cut out the sod and it's done. It lasts the season, and like regular grass you cut it back and water it."

The terrace is a magnet for neighborhood kids, Rogow says. "It's like a clubhouse ... It's an extremely social building."

That wasn't always the case. When Rogow moved here, the building hadn't participated in the life of the neighborhood for 15 years. "For years, I've been consulting to museums and nonprofits about developing cultural amenities. I wanted to see what I could live upstairs from that would contribute to the neighborhood and would be wholesome and pleasant. Since I'd gained all this weight after I moved here from L.A., I thought I'd open a movement studio and take care of all those issues."

Five years later, with more than 30 teachers and upwards of 60 classes a week, MaMa (and an adjoining space called PaPa, or Physical Arts of Pennsylvania) is well established. For Rogow, whose energy seems to know no bounds, it's still a sideline to her museum-consulting business, though a sideline that's close to both her heart and her home.

Her son, Doug Bernstein, now in college, grew up over the studio. "His bedroom was right above it," Rogow says. "I'd have to remind him. `It's Tuesday morning, you can't play rock-and-roll. They're meditating! Did you forget?' "